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October 07, 2012

I am, of course, obligated to tell you about every online mahjong client I experiment with, even though Tenhou is of such quality that you really need nothing else.

The current experiment is Mahjong Hime, a client that opened just a few weeks ago. It is nearly the same game as the Japanese Momoiro Taisen Pairon (Peach-Colored Wars Pairon). A title like that could only belong to a moe game, and so it is here. The game is mahjong, but the otaku hook is cute girl characters played by famous Japanese voice actresses.

Janryumon has been going this route as well: charging the player to use the voices of famous Japanese VAs, items to make your player character look like one of the schoolgirls from Saki. Pairon just brings otaku interest to the fore, as the player chooses a moe avatar (starting out with a catgirl) and pays game currency or cash to get new characters.

Mahjong Hime is just an English-localized version of this, with Taiwanese and Singaporean styles (both are kind of bonkers rulesets) added as a nice extra touch.

Unfortunately, the English localization is only really halfway: vital info like the scoring screens and yaku are completely untranslated and left as a mystery to the player who doesn't already understand them. Nobody's going to learn how to play using this thing, that's for sure.

Since it's an online game, you're amassing currency to unlock things for the character: you either put game money into unlocking voice clips (which will make her very noticeably chattier) or risque illustrations that don't actually have much to do with anything. The typical "grind faster!" and gacha money traps are, of course, present. Due to the fancier interface, matches (and players) are a little slower here than on Tenhou.

Because it's new, and because it's mahjong, there are very few players online. The players who are there tend to prefer playing against AI bots all by themselves, perhaps because they are more interested in grinding game money than actually playing mahjong. (But playing other people gets you more game money...)

If I start a room, people will come in and expect me to just start a game with two AIs, and get upset and leave because I won't. They don't know why you wouldn't want to play AIs. What's the point of playing online mahjong against a dummy computer? You're online to play against people! But hey, people here seem to like it.

Likewise, I don't think there's a quitting penalty, and I haven't had a 4P match yet where at least one of the players didn't quit before the match was through. Sometimes this is a result of quits, sometimes this is a result of the system's very shaky connectivity.

The competition is very low-level, as in just figuring out the rules of the game, so when I go there I tend to slaughter. If you know what you're doing, you'll probably slaughter too. It's kind of mahjong stress relief compared to the more serious Tenhou.

So Mahjong Hime isn't too great, but it is an Engish MJ client and it does feature moe waifus. If that's what it takes, well then dammit, otaku...

My ID on there is TRIPLE BREAK.

Bonus screenshot! There
was one of the 5-pin dora left and none of my other wait-- a hell wait,
as it's called-- and the table wasn't playing any defense at all, making the most dangerous and reckless deals imaginable no matter what. But they weren't dealing into ME, was the problem: North was as reckless as the others and was lucking out on that. My
other option was bad, but not as bad as this wait was. Frustrated with
it, I threw down this reach, saying "If one of these guys has the dora,
and it doesn't fit in his hand, he will just throw it at me without a
moment's thought." I was absolutely correct.

(This post will contain spoilers for the latest chapter of Genshiken 2.)

I know, I know, we really hardly talk at all about anime/manga on this blog anymore. What can I say? I still do a lot of it, probably more of it than I ever did, really... but these days I get paid for that work. Not a lot, mind, but it's not like there's anybody out there who's going to pay me for my mahjong and toku posts.

But I wanted to talk about something that's not out there legitimately yet, something really recent. Genshiken 2 is out from Kodansha Comics as we speak. You should definitely buy it. The dialogue is natural, and they didn't screw up with the otaku stuff like in the Del Rey version. No excuses.

Now that said, I can't bear to wait a second to find out what's going on in my otaku soap opera-- and make no mistake, Genshiken is now and has been a very low-key otapera-- so I look up the latest chapters the very moment they're translated. Not gonna lie.

So what's up this month? A pivotal event, really. The biggest hanging plot thread of the first series-- the supernaturally pathetic uber-otaku Madarame's lingering crush on the fashionable, fiesty, not-otaku, not-moe Saki Kusakabe-- has finally been dealt with.

Genshiken is basically a new series now: aside from Madarame, the previous members are rarely seen because they've moved on to new lives. Most of the Genshiken guys turned their passions into their careers. Madarame's working, he's certainly more mature, but his general condition is another matter. Though he's changed, he's a guy who really can't leave the Genshiken behind. Obviously a lot of that has to do with his feelings for Saki. He's suffering in limbo because he can't bear to put himself out there, to do something that's going to hurt.

The confession had to be forced, of course: Madarame had to be tricked into a room where Saki waited, and then she had to drop obvious "let's please get this out of the way" hints one after the other. Ultimately, Madarame was just barely figure out that the gang was trying to get him to say what everybody knew he had to say... and he still didn't really have it in him to say it. The confession itself was a punchline. But, despite that, the air was cleared between these characters. Madarame confessed, and was rejected, and everybody involved can now move on with their lives.

I love how they handled this. I wouldn't be making a post about this if I wasn't really happy with the resolution: I mean, you can read Carl's blog for your Genshiken sum-ups. I like both of these characters a lot, though, and I'm happy with the ending this part of the story got.

The interesting thing about their relationship at this point is that, yeah, this scene is a rejection, but it's a rejection between close friends. There is a lot of warmth and affection that displays how complicated these characters are and how far they've come. (Though it was on hiatus for years, Genshiken started running ten years ago!)

Saki gives the first impression that she's just mean. She wouldn't be caught dead in this social circle, she's only there on account of her boyfriend, et cetera. But it becomes clear very early in the comic that she enjoys the company of the group and she legitimately cares about them. She still can't be caught dead with them, but she's fond of this circle of friends.

And Saki and everybody around her knows that Madarame is the sort to be hung up on this shit forever. Really, for a thousand years at least. She wants to avoid hurting this guy... but nothing's going to happen between them. Definitely. But that doesn't mean she hates Madarame. And that kind of situation-- certainly you've seen it yourself at some point-- takes a toll on the crusher and the one crushed upon, you know? As much as you can read Madarame's feelings on his beet-red face, you see Saki anxious, expectant. At the end Saki gets sniffly because she's so relieved that she didn't traumatize this guy with her rejection. People complaining about the "friend zone" is horse shit. It's not like that. Anyway!

(Even Kohsaka, Saki's boyfriend, is on the same wavelength about this: Kohsaka says, knowing Saki and Madarame are having this conversation, "I love Madarame too." This is probably the only profound character moment Kohsaka has ever gotten.)

So we see these two characters in a room-- as they were many years ago-- very awkwardly and gently try and establish this. I was touched. I'd really like to see this section animated, just because I want to hear Hiyama play this scene.

If you wanted to see the Saki and Madarame thing go the other way, the author was curious as well. Read Shimoku's Spotted Flower, in which he casts two characters who are very clearly the same people as Saki and Madarame as a newlywed couple in a few short stories. "There might have been a future like that."